As to the people who were not stigmatised as impure of blood, it is very difficult to draw a boundary line distinct enough to divide them clearly according to their blood relationship. During the anarchical period of our history from the later Ashikaga to the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, there took place a violent convulsion of the social strata, as the result of the disorder which reigned everywhere. Many talented plebeians had lucky chances to enlist as _samurai_ in the service of some _daimyo_, while many of the scions of noted warrior families transformed themselves into plebeians, from disgust at their calling of men-slaughterers or from disappointment in their ambitions as warriors. In the time which followed, that is to say, when social order was reestablished, such a transmutation became exceedingly difficult, as might be supposed. Yet even since then it is not altogether a matter of sheer impossibility. Plebeians of rare merit, especially those who were skilled in certain branches of art and learning, were able to find their way upward without much difficulty. The word "_samurai_" which had meant a "warrior attending" came to denote a social rank above the plebeians, so that it could include those who pursued a profession which was far from being militaristic, such as men of letters, physicians, painters, _no_-dancers and the like in the retinue of the _daimyo_. Many territorial bourgeois, too, transformed themselves into _samurai_ by contributing large sums of money to the treasury of their lord, or by purchasing the rank from some poor inheritors of _samurai_ blood who were reduced to extreme penury, so as to be no more able to serve their _daimyo_ as honourable warriors.